Unterlaa, Vienna — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Unterlaa?

The Johanneskirche at Klederinger Straße 74 is the whole reason to make the trip. Its high-medieval fabric may reach back to the first third of the eleventh century, which makes it the likeliest candidate for the oldest surviving church anywhere in Vienna; on 4 December 1272 the Vienna burgher Paltram vor dem Freithof sold his fortified holding, church included, to the Knights Hospitaller for 300 marks of silver, and their Maltese cross still sits on the tower tip and in the windows. A Heilig-Grab-Kapelle stands free beside it, copied from the Jerusalem original, with half-columns, blind arcading and a shingle roof.

Under and around the church the Bezirksmuseum Favoriten runs an archaeological Schauraum, open the first Sunday of each month from May to October; the museum also holds a Roman gravestone from the site, cut for a Celt named Devomarus. Four more listed objects lie close by. The Prentlhof at Klederinger Straße 169, a Meierhof of the later seventeenth century, carries a Marian cartouche above its gate and hunting scenes painted on the walls upstairs; the Hofmühle at Unterlaaer Straße 32 is a baroque farm mill on the bank of the Liesing; the Kreuzwegstation by Scheunenstraße 2 marks the pilgrim road to Maria Lanzendorf, its original panel now in the museum and a Mount of Olives mosaic in its place; and the Schutzengelkreuz of 1694, a guardian angel and child on a stone shaft, stands on the field path that continues Georg-Wiesmayer-Gasse.

The Immaculatasäule keeps to the high ground Am Johannesberg.

What is the history of Unterlaa?

Laa was one settlement before it was two, and this eastern half went by Niederlaa as often as by its modern name. The sale that first names it is dated 4 December 1272, when Paltram vor dem Freithof passed his fortified holding to the Knights Hospitaller on condition that six brothers, two of them priests, cared for six poor or wounded men. Their hospice adjoined the church until the second Turkish siege of Vienna destroyed both in 1683; the nave was rebuilt in 1686 and the sacristy added in 1779.

The order held the ground until 1848. After that the village ran itself: Georg Prentl brought gas lighting and founded the fire brigade between 1886 and 1903, and Josef Prentl connected the houses to the mountain-spring mains during his term from 1919 to 1938. Vienna had already annexed the larger uninhabited stretches in 1873.

The law of 1 October 1938 moved the rest into a short-lived twenty-third district named after Schwechat; when Schwechat returned to Lower Austria in 1954, Unterlaa stayed behind and joined Favoriten on 1 September of that year.

Where is Unterlaa?

The Liesing crosses Unterlaa from west to east and the village strings itself along one road beside it, a Straßendorf of hook-shaped and three-sided farmyards around Unterlaaer Platz. Oberlaa lies upstream. Downstream the boundary of Vienna arrives: Kledering belongs to Schwechat, and the market town of Leopoldsdorf closes the southern side, both of them Lower Austrian.

The Donauländebahn clips the northern fields, a freight bypass opened on 3 May 1872. The Johannesberg is the high ground south of the church, vineyard until the mid-nineteenth century and now the Austrian Power Grid substation; the reservoir on Scheunenstraße below it takes the city's third main from the Mitterndorfer Senke and is the largest Vienna owns.